Wildvale War
The Wildvale war refers to a series of conflicts which took place over the span of 4,000 years across the Wildvale Forest. Background The 7,000s brought with it the greatest upheaval in Elven Society since The Fall. Elves were being drawn to new forms of magic, never known to have existed before. This expanse of what was once a singular Arcane form of Magic created political and cultural turmoil that led to three new distinct forms of magic being discovered and distinct social groups being formed around them. Debates over the new forms of magic and what place they had in Elven society led to a great split and the eventual self-exile of tens of thousands of Druids and Dark Magic users. These refugees were drawn across the continent by the call of powerful beings and after arriving to them spent the next several thousand years building their own empires. When the druid elves first arrived in Wildvale they found a lush and uninhabited stretch of forest being tended to by forest spirits and other species living in harmony under the watchful eye of the powerful nature deity Centeron. First Human Contact Though the forests of wildvale were uninhabited a small number of shamanistic humans had lived in the region for sometime as hunter gatherers, either in small tribes or on their own, worshiping the same forest deities the elves did. As these humans weren't capable of magic the elves considered them an animal like any other, such as the furbogs or deer or centaurs or the like. Yet as time went on the number of these humans decreased slowly until they had vanished from the forest entire. After humans had begun showing the ability to use magic some did travel to the forest and become druids. Living in the region for several generations and changing physically the same way the elves had. After a few centuries these humans left the forest in the hopes of acting a great migration similar to the one the elves had done. Only to be misidentified as orcs due to their green skin and slaughtered by fellow humans. This group of druids today is known as the Drew Orcs. Human Raids Besides examples such as that, humans for the most part were hostile to the elves. Barbarians and human tribes began raiding began efforts of raiding the elven settlements when the empire was at its height approximately 3,000 years after its founding. The human raiders were quickly repelled and found little success in their attacks. Though still if for every 100 towns they raided they managed to destroy 10 of them, that still had an effect on the borderlands of the empire and so due to the danger of the region many elves moved inward leading to the outlying settlements being weaker and more easy to conquer. Meanwhile captured elves and slaves were coveted by the wild humans and as their civilizations grew so did they attacks against the Elven Empire. After the destruction of the wood elves to the north, the emboldened human forces began to put much more efforts into their attacks against the elves as formal campaigns began where armies were assembled to invade them. Escalation of War The first fullscale invasion attempt against the forest elves began in -2984 CY with the invasion of Gilgram The Grand. Though this invasion was widely unsuccessful and the human forces were quickly defeated, Gilgram is still considered a great warrior by humans today.and Elven slaves are often forced to worship idols or statues of his image in an attempt to erase their native religion. Over the next 1,000 years there were at least 14 more major invasions from human coalitions with the last one being the first that could have been considered a strategic success. After the 5th invasion northern elves began participating in attacks against Forest Elves whom many considered to be traitors. Leagues serving patriotic warrior orders back in __ began sending armies to aid the human attacks and even building outposts on the borders of wildvale where they routinely orchestrated raids on settlement within wildvale. Outside of Wildvale The Forest Elves had been using waypoints for millennia to travel outside of Wildvale and create outposts. Locations for these outposts include, Vinegully Gulch, The Red Mountains and Black Marsh. Each saw their own miniwars as part of the larger Elven Conquest that manifested themselves in vastly different ways. In the Red Mountain the main attacks at first were from waring Minotaur tribes who saw the elves as just another faction to be crushed. The death toll from this was significant and Elves found themselves being slaughtered wholesale on several occasions. During the Battle of Broken Pass nearly an entire Elven Battalion was wiped out after the Minotaurs began using captured and injured elves as living armor, knowing their comrades would hesitate to shoot arrows or swing blades if doing so would kill their own. Orc Involvement